A Viral Defense of Russian Imperialism, Addressed to Obama

A Russian video blogger’s strident defense of his nation’s invasion and occupation of its neighbors, in the form of an open letter to President Obama uploaded to the web on Saturday, has become an instant hit among Russian nationalists, but raised alarm bells in other former Soviet republics.

The video, “I Am a Russian Occupier,” answers criticism of Russia’s role in Ukraine by making the case for Russian imperial conquest throughout history as a constructive, civilizing force. The narration, adapted from a prose poem published last year by Alexei Ivanov, a Russian writer, asserts that Russians have a proud history of improving the lands they invaded and occupied in the past, including Siberia, the Baltic states and Ukraine.

“I once occupied Siberia. Now they produce oil, gas, aluminum and other useful stuff,” the narrator says, echoing Kipling’s defense of colonial rule in “The White Man’s Burden.” “Now there are cities with kindergartens and hospitals,” he continues. “Now they can’t sell women for a bundle of sable skins, like it used to be before the Russians.”

The two-and-a-half minute film, employing computer animation and graphics in the style of a video game, has been viewed nearly three million times since it was uploaded to social networks over the weekend by a blogger named Evgeny Zhurov in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

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A screenshot from the video, "I Am a Russian Occupier," rejecting free speech of dissidents like the protest group Pussy Riot.

It ends with a pointed rejection of the values of Western nations that have been critical of Russia — including gay rights and the free speech of Russian dissidents — and a bellicose threat to defend national interests with military might, if necessary:

“Understand, I do not need your hypocritical ‘freedom,’ I do not need your rotten ‘democracy.’ Everything that you call ‘Western values’ is alien to me. I have other interests! I’ll politely warn you for the last time: Do not mess with me! I build peace, I love peace, but more than anyone I know how to fight.”

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A screenshot from the video, "I Am a Russian Occupier," mocking the West's embrace of gay rights.

That endorsement did not escape the attention of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, one of the Baltic nations described as beneficiaries of Russian occupation in the video.

When the Baltics were ruled from Moscow, the video’s narrator argues, their farmland was used to build productive factories. In the post-Soviet era, as part of the European Union, he said, Baltic citizens have been reduced to cleaning the toilets of their Western neighbors.

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A screenshot from the video, "I Am a Russian Occupier," mocking the European Union by replacing the stars in its flag with toilet bowels.

The video’s rosy vision of the Soviet past — eliding any reference to the repression in the Baltics, mismanaged water resources in Central Asia or the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine — was hailed by Russian nationalists, but it evoked less enthusiasm among their neighbors.